Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

So, last time I was having a think about crime and how society punishes it. And the fact is, that it doesn't really do a good job of it - when there is an obvious solution to it all.

The most common punishments which are reported on the news are jail time or fines. So lets start with Jail time.

Firstly, someone is paying for the incarceration. That's right, its the taxpayers. So we're paying money to keep people who have done some crimes fed and kept an eye on.

Secondly, it causes a lot of negative effects to other people. The prisoner's family suffers because of the fact that their family member is in prison. If the prisoner is a breadwinner, the entire family will have to live poorer because of the fact that s/he committed a crime. Letting other people suffer for the crimes of an individual is unfair.

Thirdly, it doesn't do the prisoner any good. Lets face it, prisons are there to act as a deterrent, they don't really 'fix' people. There was a statistic somewhere which asserted that when someone is sent to prison, there is a large chance of him going back to prison again. Apparently in California, 7/10 of prisoners return to prison within 3 years. This is for multiple reasons. As you can imagine, putting social pariahs in the same place to keep each other company won't make them better people, they'll pick up bad habits, get assaulted and won't really help out society when they're out. Also does anyone want to employ a previously incarcerated person? Not really.


So jails don't really work. Not for people within the system at least. Allright I recognise that some people need to be locked up so the rest of us can feel save. I don't want a mass murderer running around in my neighborhood. But those are the exception.

So what's the other popular alternative ? Fines.

The problem with fines is obvious - the value of the fine depends on your income. If laws set the fine too high, poorer people can't pay it, but then rich people won't care. You get fined (say) 50 euros for overspeeding - if you're a student who just bought the car and are under debt, you're going to sweat blood for that money. If you're a hotshot businessman and over-sped with your Audi, big deal - the waiters at the restaurant can get a smaller tip next time.

The ideal solution to these problems is simple. Put them to work doing something for the good of society.

There are tons of jobs around which are hard work and which need to be done - and which can be done by unskilled people. Instead of locking someone up for 15 years for sneaking drugs in, give him 780 days of such work. He can still support and provide for his family, he doesn't have to be in the company of delinquents, and he can spend his own personal free time once a week making society a better place. It doesn't have to be breaking rocks in a quarry, it could easily just be sweeping up the roads, or collecting garbage or planting flowers in the middle of roundabouts.

This sort of thing works exceptionally well for large companies as well. The company does something illegal? Instead of fining the company what is essentially a rounding error on their profit margin, grab the CEO and board of directors - and put them to work. The idea of a billionaire hotshot cleaning up garbage will be so deliciously humiliating that I'm pretty sure the company will straighten up VERY quickly.

And there you go. This sort of punishment is sometimes given out but not as frequently as I might like. Maybe if they handed it out for everything, society would work much better.

The Llama